The U.S. Supreme Court decision in Knowles v. Standard Fire rested on what Congress intended to do when it enacted class-action reforms eight years ago, according to Georgene Vairo, a law professor at Loyola Law School at Los Angeles who wrote a book on the Class Action Fairness Act of 2005.

Arkansas Attorney General Dustin McDaniel was one of the few state AGs who supported the plaintiffs’ attorneys who used a perceived loophole in federal law to keep potential class-action lawsuits in state courts.

The high court agreed with dozens of other corporations that have complained that Miller County Circuit Court is a legal backwater where friendly elected judges help prolific local class-action attorneys exploit a loophole in federal law to force giant settlements in cases whose legal merits are never even considered.